Today was a drive and hike day. We decided yesterday that we would head south west from Cooinda as we wouldn’t be covering this area in our tour on Thursday. We also had it on good advice that Boulder Creek was a great place to visit, so that would be our turn around point as it was the furthest away at around the 100k mark. We packed a picnic lunch of sandwiches and fruit and were in the car and on the road by 9am.
Our first stop was Murdukal Lagoon that is a camping area with a decent boat ramp for anyone with a boat. There were only a couple of campers here and the toilet and shower block looked almost new. We drove down to the boat ramp but kept well clear of the water!
Next stop was Gungural where there were two walks, one to South Aligator Creek (800m) and the other to the lookout (2km return). We walked to the Creek first but we were disappointed to find that it was a dry creek bed albeit a very pretty place with its huge gum trees.
We backtracked to the fork that pointed to the lookout and we discussed the walk to the lookout. It looked like quite a steep walk and it was a grade 3 (difficult) so I said to Philip that I would walk as far as I felt comfortable and he could continue to the top. As it turned out it was quite an easy hike. There were a lot of loose rocks along the path but other than that it was a gentle climb to the top. There are fires burning everywhere at the moment so our view was not as good as it might have been but it was an invigorating hike so I was pleased that I did it.
Bukbukluk Lookout was our next destination. The road into the lookout was not the greatest road we have driven on. It was bitumen but full of potholes. The sign at the turnoff said no buses so I understand why. When we reached the parking area we saw that the fire was burning right up to the carpark so Philip made certain that he parked the car in an area that fire would not reach. This was a really easy walk, around 800m I think, but the views from here are magnificent, or they would be if there was not so much smoke haze!
It was only 10km further along the Kakadu Highway when we reached the turnoff to the Yurmikmik walks. We stopped at the information station and checked that the road was open as a lot of roads are still closed.
Gimbat Road is a gravel road with a lot of corrugations. It looked like it might have been graded, perhaps for Easter, but there has been a lot of traffic over it so it needs doing again. We drove fairly slow along the 10km gravel road, not so much for the corrugations but for the washouts that are deadly! The country started changing and we were driving alongside large mountains with sheer drop rock escarpments. This was interesting country. When we arrived at Yurmikmik we were in the shadows of those large rocky mountains.
It was lunch when we arrived at Yurmikmik (don't you love the aboriginal names) so we selected a picnic table in the shade and devoured our sandwiches and fruit. While we were eating our lunch other hikers were coming and going and by the time we were ready to hike there was a party of three walking just in front of us. We all chose the Boulder Creek walk.
The walk started out easy enough across the grasslands and we did cross a couple of narrow water courses but suddenly we had a wall of boulders in front of us. My first thought was one of disappointment that we wouldn’t get to dip our toes in any water but billy goat Philip started scrambling over the boulders as he reckoned, he could hear water up higher. The party of three followed him but I chose to stay put as I really, really dislike rock climbing. One of the ladies from the other group stayed with me because she also had a dislike of this sort of hike. We were content to stay put but the others told us it was an easy scramble and that it was worth the climb, so we succumbed. Was it easy? Not on your nelly. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I didn’t have my bathers on but that didn’t stop me lounging fully clothed in one of the shallow rock pools. I have inserted a GoPro video of our swim at Boulder Creek but as we are only 3G I'm not certain that it will upload.
The walk back down over those rocks and boulders was easier because I could sit on my backside and slide down and the hike back to the car seemed to take no time at all.
All up we drove just over 200km and didn’t arrive home until almost 3pm. Kakadu is so different to Litchfield. It is very much in need of some love and the governments both Federal and State need to invest in this area. The roads are pretty horrendous, the ones that are open that is, but there are many roads that are closed. It will be interesting to see what the roads are like north of here when we do our tour on Thursday.
Tomorrow, we have an hour and half flight over Kakadu National Park that we are both looking forward to.
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